For the opening act of her senior year at Hampshire College, Quinn Thomashaw sang and played guitar with her band Over Under at Windsor Station last Thursday night.
Then on Sunday, they played a couple of songs on the gazebo at the Tunbridge World’s Fair.
And this Friday night, Over Under plays a concert at the Town House in Thomashow’s hometown of Strafford, during which Thomashow and her collaborators might film members of the audience talking about their lives. If they do, they might project those filmed observations onto a bare wall.
Welcome to the kickoff for Over Under’s Escape Tour, a key part of Thomashow’s continuing study of her two passions, music and experimental film.
“It’s part of my senior thesis,” Thomashow said earlier this month. “And it’s cheaper than being on campus for a semester.”
Technically, it’s part of Hampshire’s field-study program. And practically, Thomashow said, “I wasn’t sure whether we were going to pull it off, and when, until the middle of the summer.”
While waiting for the go-ahead, Thomashow, a 2016 graduate of The Sharon Academy who’s majoring in experimental film, served an internship with Dartmouth College film professor Jodie Mack and audited a couple of Mack’s classes.
“It was like meeting somebody who really knows her stuff about that subgenre,” Thomashow said. “It was really special for me.”
Mack is already missing her intern. “She’s got so much talent visually and musically,” Mack wrote during a recent exchange of emails. “She’s a bright light!”
While “I’ve always been a visual person,” Thomashow said, she was playing music before she saw the light of cinema as another avenue for creativity.
“I was playing on a tiny piano when I was 2,” she recalled. “I was already making up songs with words that didn’t actually exist.”
As a seventh- and eighth-grader at the Newton School in Strafford, Thomashow began singing and playing saxophone with her father, Peter Thomashow.
“It was very Beatles-esque, some Brian Wilson and Neil Young,” she said. “He also liked experimental music. I remember playing a show at the Main Street Museum, with a theremin player.
“If I hadn’t chosen film, music would have been one of my natural instincts to pursue.”
Thomashow credits The Sharon Academy with encouraging her to blend both disciplines.
“Getting individual attention from teachers … is really important,” she said. “They helped me learn how I learn. My senior year, Blake Fabrikant taught an elective in filmmaking. I wrote a documentary with no talking heads, based on a letter I wrote to a kid I used to take care of at the Icelandic horse farm in Tunbridge. It really sparked my interest in pursuing experimental film in college.”
While taking a variety of courses in pursuit of her degree at Hampshire, Thomashow met like-minded students with whom she started playing music. Eventually they formed Over Under, a collaborative that remained together even as members graduated. Their reunion is also their first tour.
“We’re not well known, but we’ve booked 19 gigs and workshops so far,” Thomashow said. “There’s no way of knowing what’s going to happen, which is fine.”
That said, much of the tour is planned out, with gigs at venues far and wide, as well as experimental film workshops that Thomashow plans to teach.
If she has one goal, aside from completing her thesis, Thomashow points to “my love for adventure, wanting to see my own country. I don’t feel like I know much about it beyond New England and the West Coast.
“There’s a lot for me to learn from other people. Part of the problem in our country is that we don’t want to hear anything else other than our own echo chamber.
“I’m looking forward to hearing different perspectives, finding compassion for as many people as possible.”
Quinn Thomashow and the band/art collective Over Under perform in the Strafford Town House on Friday night at 6. Admission by donation with half of the proceeds going to the fund for maintaining the Town House.
Best bets Northern Stage kicks off its 2019-2020 season this week, with a production of Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House 2 at the Barrette Center for the Arts in White River Junction. After previews on Thursday and Friday nights and Saturday afternoon (tickets $17.75 to $32.75), the play opens Saturday night and runs through Oct. 6, at ticket prices of $17.75 to $57.75. The play imagines what might happen if Nora Helmer, heroine of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 drama about a woman leaving her husband and children, comes back home years later. To reserve seats and learn more, visit northernstage.org or call 802-296-7000.
After Sunday’s matinee, the company hosts its second annual Lights Up Cabaret, performed in flash-mob style on the theme of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”. For tickets ($99) and more information, visit northernstage.org/lightsup or call 802-296-7000.
■Boston quartet Darlingside plays its mix of baroque, folk and pop on Friday night at 7:30 at Chandler Music Hall in Randolph. For tickets ($10 to $45) and more information, visit chandler-arts.org and 802-728-6464.
■Hanover Strings’ Upstream Live series of live-streamed concerts returns from summer hiatus on Friday night at 7:30, with performances by Windsor folk musician Carl Goulet playing his repertoire of North Americana and Royalton’s Alison “AliT” Turner performing across the spectrum of roots and pop. To view, visit upstreamlive.tv.
■Veteran singer-songwriter David Wilcox brings his smooth baritone and guitar wizardry to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Upper Valley in Norwich on Friday night at 7:30. Tickets cost $20 in advance (visit uucuv.org/uucuv-coffeehouse-performances) and $25 at the door.
■The Lebanon Department of Parks and Recreation hosts its third annual celebration of the Rusty Berrings Skatepark in West Lebanon on Saturday afternoon from 1 to 5. Harrison Hinman, a D.J. for The River radio station, spins the tunes. The park is named in memory of Tyler Kirschner, who blogged about skating and life under the name Rusty Berrings.
■The River City Rebels headline a feast of rock-n-roll on Saturday night, at the Junction Youth Center in White River Junction. Other bands scheduled to play include The Law Abiders and Nimble Pines. Doors open at 7, with a cover charge of $10.
■The Parish Players stage eight performances of Rebecca Gilman’s satire of academia, Spinning Into Butter, starting next Thursday night at the Eclipse Grange Theatre on Thetford Hill. The show runs through Oct. 6. For tickets ($10 to $20) and more information, visit parishplayers.org.
Theater/performance art Tintypes: A Musical Celebration of America, preview performance Thursday night at 7:30 at Grange Theatre in South Pomfret. Opens Friday night and runs through Oct. 5. Admission $25 to $30 for preview, $28 to $35 thereafter.
Happy Hour, choreographer Monica Bill Barnes’ gender-bending satire of toxic masculinity in the office, opens Thursday night with 5:30 and 8:30 performances at Dartmouth College’s Moore Theater. Runs through Saturday night. Admission $35.
Nightfall with Edgar Allan Poe, performances Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon, at Old Church Theater, 176 Waits River Road in Bradford, Vt. Admission $6 to $12.
Music Moxley Union, rock, Thursday evening at 5:30 during Feast & Field Market, at Fable Farm in Barnard; and Saturday at noon at Claremont Brewfest, 14 North St.
■Dan Frechette and Laurel Thomsen, folk/roots, Friday night at 7 at Sunapee Coffeehouse. Admission by donation.
■ Royalton-native singer-guitarist Zach Nugent, Fire on the Mountain show of covers of Jerry Garcia songs, Friday night at 9 at The Skinny Pancake in Hanover. Admission $10 for students; adult prices of $12 in advance and $14 at the door.
■Sensible Shoes, Sunday afternoon at 3 during Strafford Edible Pocket Park.
Bar and club circuit Royalton singer-songwriter Alison “AliT” Turner, 5 p.m. Thursday at The Hungry Bear in Bradford, Vt.
■Saxophonist Michael Parker, jazz, with singer-keyboardist Jerry Grimo 6 p.m. Thursday at Peyton Place restaurant in Orford and with singer Josh Hall at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Quechee Inn at Marshland Farm.
■The Repeat Offenders, soul, jazz and rock, 7 p.m. Thursday at Windsor Station; Unbalanced, rock, 9:30 p.m. Saturday; guitarist Ted Mortimer, Tuesday night at 6.
■The Party Crashers, rock, Friday night at 8 at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland.
■Singer-songwriter Ken Macy, 9 p.m. Friday at Salt hill Pub in Lebanon; Better Days, classic rock, 9 p.m. Saturday.
■Alec Currier, rock, Friday night at 9 at Salt hill Pub in Hanover; Adam McMahon Duo, rock and blues, Saturday night at 9.
■Adam McMahon Duo, rock and blues, 9 p.m. Friday at Salt hill Pub in West Lebanon; Chris Powers, rock, 4 p.m. Saturday.
■SIRSY, folk-rock, Friday night at 9 at Salt hill Pub in Newport.
■ Jes Raymond and Jakob Breitbach, roots/Americana, Sunday night at 5 at Harpoon Brewery in Windsor.
■Singer-songwriter Jim Yeager, 7 p.m. Monday at Woodstock Inn’s Richardson Tavern, and 5 p.m. Wednesday in the inn’s lobby.
■Jazz pianist Sonny Saul, at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday On the River Inn in Woodstock.
Open mics/jam sessions Alec Currier’s open-mic at Salt hill Pub in Lebanon, Thursday nights at 8.
■All-comers jam, folk, Sunday from 4 to 9 p.m. at Seven Stars Arts Center in Sharon.
■Joseph Stallsmith’s hootenanny of Americana, folk and bluegrass, Monday nights at 6 at Salt hill Pub in Hanover.
■Fiddler Jakob Breitbach’s acoustic jam session of bluegrass, Americana and old-timey music, Tuesday nights at 7 at Filling Station Bar and Grill in White River Junction.
■Tom Masterson’s open mic, Tuesday nights at 7 at Colatina Exit.
■Woodstock singer-songwriter Jim Yeager, open-mic session Tuesday night at 6 at The Public House Pub in Quechee.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304. Send entertainment news to highlights@vnews.com.